Deakin: Board made mistakes over nil-paid shares

Deakin: Board made mistakes over nil-paid shares

Port Vale CEO Perry Deakin has told the Sentinel that the board got “carried away” with the Blue Sky deal, that he “was never going to own” his £100,000 share allocation and that the exposure of the nil-paid shares fiasco was “awful.”

Speaking to the Staffordshire Sentinel Deakin commented: : “We had got in a situation where the fans were demanding certain members of the board left the club, including the chairman and Glenn Oliver.

“It was very clear to us that the protests wouldn’t stop and the disruption wouldn’t stop until that had happened.

“Having first guaranteed us that would stop when Bill stepped down, that then wasn’t good enough and they wanted him off the board. That was their prerogative.

“Blue Sky agreed to buy 500,000 of shares of which £100,000 would be given to me.

“I never asked for those shares and was never going to own them. They were always belonging to Blue Sky, and if I ever left the club I was contractually obliged to hand them back.

“I needed shares in the club to become a director. We all felt at the time, looking back I think wrongly, that it was fine because it allowed Bill to step down and allowed me to step into his place.

“It also allowed Glenn to step down technically and Peter Miller to step into his place, and allowed Blue Sky to step on to the board as well. We felt it was the right thing to do.

“But then the minute they (Blue Sky) defaulted on their payments, we were in a terrible mess. Then we were exposed as having nil-paid shares and it was awful.

“I am a big boy and it was my decision, but I went along with what was presented to me because I felt it was in the best interests of the club.

“The irony of it all is, around the shares, we believed we were giving the supporters what they wanted. In hindsight it just caused more damage.”

“It would be arrogant beyond belief to say everything was done correctly. As a board we have to hold our hands up and say we made some mistakes. Certainly the way Blue Sky was presented was a mistake. We got carried away. We believed it was a great deal for the club.

“The £8m figure was Blue Sky’s. It was their figure for everything they were doing. We went along with it and in hindsight we shouldn’t have done.”

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